


When I'm With You

by blue_wonderer



Series: Kiss for Luck [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion, Altruistic Criminals, Hacker!Barry, Hitter!Sara, Kissing, Kissing Tropes, Leverage AU, M/M, Team as Family, Thief!Len, slight implication of homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 00:04:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13799160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_wonderer/pseuds/blue_wonderer
Summary: (Sometimes the bad guys make the best good guys.)During a heist, the team uncovers plans for something too big to be solved with a con and must decide if they should try to help or cut and run. But first, Len and Barry need to get themselves out of a sticky situation with the building's security.





	When I'm With You

**Author's Note:**

> For an anon on tumblr who asked for more Leverage AU!

“Len,” Barry says as they half-jog down the hall. He feels sick. He’s going to _throw up_. He shouldn’t be surprised at what they found. They deal with sleazy douchebags all the time, people in power who abuse people with no power, who cheat them or kill them because they’re _inconvenient_. But this, this level of malice on this scale is… 

“I know,” Len says, matching his pace. Barry glances at him, can see Len trying to rotate the problem, estimating timelines, trying to find the puzzle pieces and put them together. 

“Len,” Barry says, a little louder.

“ _I know,_ ” Len repeats. 

“We—We have to do something,” and he hates himself as he says it because he just really rather run. He’s survived this long because he’s run. The team has survived this long because its made up of criminals who know when to run. And now they have stumbled on something so much bigger than the jobs they usually pull. They _should_ cut and run but... "We have to stop this." 

“I know—” Len stops abruptly in the middle of the hall. “Wait. _What?_ ” 

Barry runs a few more steps before skidding to a halt, too. “Len, why did you... come on!” 

_“Guys!”_ Sara, who’s still downstairs at the party, hisses into their comms. _“Guys you’ve got a security team incoming. They must have seen something on the cams. I won’t get there in time. You need to get out_ now _.”_

Even as she says it they can hear the thunder of footsteps up the stairwell. 

“Crap,” Barry mutters as he looks around for an exit. Running he can do, but he doesn’t see many escape options readily available in the sleek, modern wing of the high rise. The elevators are too far away, are shut down anyway, and will take too long to force open. There’s not even a nearby air vent. 

“Come on,” Len says, pulling at his arm and ducking into the nearest office. 

“Oh great,” Barry grumbles. “The mean guys with guns won’t think to look in the _first office they come across!_ ” Len ignores him, grabbing his sides and manhandling him on top of the office desk. Barry's reproachful squawk is effectively choked off when Len pulls his tie and collar loose, a button or two popping loose at the rough treatment. He yanks up on Barry's shirt, untucking it from his pants and nearly lifting Barry off the desk. Papers scatter and Barry sends a stapler crashing to the floor as he scrambles for a hold under the sudden onslaught.

Barry slaps at his hands with panicked indignation. “What is _wrong_ with you? Oh—a window. Do you have your rig and harness?” He never thought he’d volunteer to throw himself out of a window but he’s almost grown accustomed to Len (and, one time, Sara) throwing him off of various heights over the past few years. 

“Yes, dear,” Len drawls, indiscriminately ruining Barry’s artfully styled hair with his hands. “I have an entire rig cleverly hidden under my waistcoat.”

The stairwell door opens with a crash. Footsteps and voices echo in the empty hall. 

_“Just hang on guys, I’ll be there in sixty,”_ Sara swears, her tone low and hard like it gets before she swoops in and breaks a lot of bones and saves the day. 

“Kiss me,” Len demands, kneeing Barry's legs apart and insinuating himself between them, his body warm against Barry's inner thighs. 

“Oh,” Barry says, finally getting the con Len is going for. “This won’t actually _work_ —” 

Len kisses him and, despite all protest, Barry easily opens to the familiar hunger. When Len’s hands move under his shirt and caress his skin, Barry clutches at the back of his shoulders, wraps one leg around his hip, brings him closer even as Barry arches up into him. 

The office door bursts in, preceding a rush of security personnel. 

Len and Barry let the kiss continue for an extra second and, sure enough, one of the men drops his _“Freeze!”_ mid-word, stunned at the unexpected scene. 

Len pulls back a little, puts on a show of swaying as he looks over his shoulder and blinks dumbly at the security team. Five men. All with guns pointed at them. 

_Always with the guns,_ Barry laments. Outwardly, he does his best to look embarrassed and a little scared (the last of which, admittedly, isn’t much a stretch). 

“What’s going on?” Len asks, lacing a fine touch of inebriation in his voice. 

“Sir, you and your…” the man trails off, looking a little green around the gills as he takes in Barry’s messy hair, the gape of his shirt, Len’s hands still under his clothes, and the loose hold Barry’s thighs have on Len’s hips. “… _Friend_ ,” he finally says, which is a rather polite alternative to what he probably wanted to call them, Barry suspects. “Are not permitted to be up here.” 

_“Do you need me?”_ Sara whispers in their ears. _“I’m here.”_

“Oh no,” Barry says, answering Sara. “We are—we are so sorry, sir.” He puts his hands up in the air like it’s a drunken after-thought. Len jerkily copies the gesture. Barry sees one of the security men near the back try to cover up a smile at their affected bumbling. “We were just—well—we are _so sorry_. A-are you—" he breaks off, makes his voice young and small. "Are you going to shoot us?” 

His scared puppy look does the trick because they all hesitate only briefly before lowering their weapons. 

“What are you doing up here?” One of them demands as Len and Barry drop their arms. 

“Well, we’re here for the party? Wes Abernathy and Tom Baker. We have our invites?” Barry says, checking his pockets before grinning up at Len and reaching into his jacket for the invites he forged, pretending not to notice the way the guards tense their grips on their guns. He hands them over to the lead security man, who passes it off to a second, who turns to check it against the guest list downstairs. Barry isn’t the least bit worried. He’d spent days fleshing out those aliases and making them appear legitimate enough to withstand moderate inspection.

“They check out,” the second security officer quickly confirms. 

“OK,” the leader says, measuredly. “That doesn’t explain what you’re doing away from the party.” 

“Well,” Len says, stepping back and helping Barry up. Barry stumbles into him with a giggle as Len wraps an arm around his waist. “As you can see, Wes looks especially… tempting tonight. We just wanted—well, we just wanted a place to be alone, you understand. Isn’t that right, Sweetheart?”

“That’s right, uh, P-Pretzel?“ 

_”…Pretzel?“_ Sara’s voice echoes over the comms. 

“Pretzel?” One of the security men repeat. 

“He’s unexpectedly limber,” Barry confides, _sotto voce_. “You won’t believe the positions he can—” 

The lead man looks positively ill at this point and turns away in disgust, heading out of the office. “I think that’s enough. We’ll escort you downstairs where we’ll ask you to leave the premises.” 

“I was talking about Twister,” Barry says, innocently, as they herd him and Len down the stairs. “You know, the game.” 

Sara’s snort comes over the comms. _“Nice job, guys. I’ll meet you at the van.”_

Security escorts them all the way to the sidewalk. They continue swaggering tipsily together right up until they’re out of the line of sight, and then they hurry to the van. Sara appears suddenly beside them, her pale legs flashing in the high slits of her slinky blue dress. They clamber into the van, squishing into the front seat, and just sit there. A nearby streetlight filters dimly into the windows. 

Normally, they would be driving away by now, laughing hysterically at their impromptu escape. Sara would be ribbing Barry mercilessly about “Pretzel” while Len looked on at them with a wry grin.

But what Len and Barry found, what the three of them now know, makes things so much more different 

“What are we going to do?” Sara finally asks. 

“We are going to get out of here before it all goes down,” Len answers decisively. “We have to get out of the radius of this thing.” 

“Len,” Sara says. “Len, we can’t do that. You know we can’t. You don’t even want to—”

“Yes, I _really_ do,” Len says through his teeth. He reaches into the darkness between the seats and links his fingers with Barry’s. 

“Barry,” Sara says, and Barry can make out her determined gaze even in the poor light. 

“Sara,” he says back. “Sara, I want to—of course I want to—but we have eighteen hours, maybe, to stop one of the biggest and best-planned domestic terror attacks I’ve ever even heard of! I don’t even know where to start—”

“We call Agent Sharpe and then we get the hell out of New York,” Len says. 

“That won’t work," Sara insists. "It’ll take that long—maybe longer—to just coordinate communication between the FBI and whatever other intelligence agency… we know that. We take advantage of it all the time.” 

“But what are you even suggesting?” Barry exclaims. “That the three of us stop them? I don't—I don’t have enough information. I can’t hack into something I don’t know!” 

“How many people did you say could die in this attack, Barry?” 

“Thousands! I want to help—I know we should try, no matter what. But this is bigger than taking down some corporate asshat—this isn’t going to be solved by a _con_! What if you and Len are caught in the fallout because I’m not fast enough—”

Sara reaches down, takes his other hand in both of hers. Len watches them, blue eyes dark in the shadows, his face knowing, like he’s already guessed the outcome. 

“Are you scared?” Sara asks, quietly. 

“I—of course I’m scared,” Barry whispers back. He can’t lose them. He’ll run into danger for them, but he rather run them out of it. 

“I’m not,” she insists, and Barry knows she’s not in the habit of lying to him—to them. He doesn’t think she’s lied to them in years. She’s really not scared that she’ll get hurt. That they’ll fail. “I’m not because I have you. I have you and Len. You’re the smartest man I know, Barr. And I know that if you get me to whoever is behind this, I can take them down. We can end this.” 

Barry takes a deep breath. Sara’s not in the habit of lying to him. And it’s not like he needed a lot of convincing. She probably knew that. 

“Len?” Barry asks. Len closes his eyes, as if resigning himself. He rubs his thumb up and down the back of Barry’s hand. 

“I know who I am when I’m alone,” he finally murmurs, like it’s an admission to himself as much as to them. “I’m the man who would call the highest authority I could and run. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have even done that.” He props their joined hands on his thigh. “I’m different when I’m with you,” he finishes simply and it doesn’t seem like much of an explanation—much of an answer to Barry's question—except Barry is pretty sure he understands. He thinks Sara does, too. 

“Okay,” Sara says, and starts the van. "Let's go save New York." 

“Guess I have some work to do,” Barry says, nerves finally subsiding enough to think past them. He lets go of their hands and moves to crawl toward the back where his computers are set up, pulling out the thumb drive he’d copied the files to. 

Len fishes his phone out of his pocket. “If we can get our hands on a couple of things,” he says, that familiar, confident smile already stretching across his face. “I think I have a plan.”

Barry stops mid-motion, stealing one more moment they can barely afford, and smirks back at him. 

“Kiss for luck?” 

**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> @wonderingtheblue on tumblr 
> 
> Why, yes. Yes, I did the cliche "let's-kiss-to-throw-off-our-pursuers" trope. 1) It's the type of cliche that'd totally be in Leverage and 2) of course Len would absolutely do this.
> 
> (Kudos/comments are adored and hung up on my fridge. ♥︎♥︎♥︎)


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